Background
Francois Bourlière was born on December 21, 1913 in Roanne, Loire, in the family of Gabriel Bourliere and Marie Deroche.
Francois Bourlière was born on December 21, 1913 in Roanne, Loire, in the family of Gabriel Bourliere and Marie Deroche.
Francois studied at Institution Saint-Joseph a Roanne. Then he received Doctor of Medicine at University of Paris, and Doctor of Science at New University of Ulster.
François was successively intern of the Hospitals of Paris and a trainee at the laboratory of the Cornell University of New York and Associate medical experimental and biology. In 1949-1959 he worked as a lecturer Associate at the Faculty of Medicine of Paris.
Francois took the position of professor in his personal capacity until 1968, then professor of the chair of physiology at the University of Paris, specially created in 1969 for him, in the which discipline he is in France the founder and the animator, the gerontology. He occupied that chair until his retirement in 1983. The chair was attached to the University Hospital of Paris West. He did not give up his medical and research activities that he would continue until the end of his life in 1993.
In 1955, Francois created the gerontology center of the Claude Bernard Association at Sainte - Périne Hospital, where he remained director until 1983. In 1967, he founded the National Foundation of Gerontology. In 1972, he founded and directed for eight years the first Gerontological Research Unit of INSERM. He was the editor of the Gerontology journal, he is the author of a dozen books and many articles dealing with gerontology.
From 1949 until his death, he was editor-in-chief of La Revue d'Ecologie. Also he was a lecturer in mammal ecology from 1962 to 1980 at the Faculty of Sciences in Paris. He was a great French and international ecologist, and took the positions of Vice President, then President of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, President of the National Society for the Protection of Nature, Nature and Chairman of the Executive Committee of Man and the Biosphere at UNESCO.
On October 2, 1942, Francois married Jacqueline Butez, with whom he had three children, Jacques, Catherine, and Marc.